NOTE: This article assumes that you know what a pressure cooker is. I realized about halfway through writing this post that some people may be new to the whole idea of pressure cooking. We’ll cover that in a later post. For now, pressure cookers allow you to make delicious food that would normally take a long time in less time by cooking them in a sealed container under pressure.
Story Time with Big Meaty….
It’s safe to say that electric pressure cookers are a hit. Gone are the days of taking your life into your own hands with a stove top pressure cooker. There are a ton of places around the internet where you can go to find recipes that can be made in the “instant pot”. As they were starting to become more popular, I decided to try to find one. With finances being a limiting factor, I cheaped out and bought the knockoff pressure cooker. I’m not unhappy with it in any way. That thing gets a lot of use and its made some of the most delicious ribs I’ve ever had in my lifetime.
That said, I wanted to expand on my capabilities in my kitchen. I’d like to do more air frying, but I really didn’t want to buy a dedicated unit for air frying. There are lots of options for air frying these days. You can buy a dedicated air fryer or get an add-on lid for either your instant pot or crock pot. This was the route I was going to initially. They sell an air fryer lid for my crock pot that goes for about $70. A little more than I wanted to spend at that moment, so I decided to wait. Well, while I’m walking through Walmart, I noticed Instant Pot is selling a unit that has the ability to pressure cook and air fry. Being the holidays, things are on sale and the unit they were carrying was $99. I didn’t look that closely at the details of what all it does, other than it air fries and pressure cooks. Again, I didn’t really want to spend the money, since there’s nothing really wrong with my pressure cooker. It just doesn’t air fry.
Last Monday, I received an email from Amazon saying they still had stuff listed at Black Friday prices. I go looking and the Instant Pot’s are still on sale. So I start reading through and I notice the one listed on Amazon (this is an important point which I’ll elaborate on in a second) has options for dehydrating, as well as sous vide (vacuum sealing and then cooking in a water bath at low temp). I’ve not really had any desire to use the sous vide option, but I’m not opposed to it. A friend of mine, who is also an exemplary cook in her own right, has done this method of cooking before with good results. Since the Instant Pot can do both of these, in addition to pressure cooking and air frying, my interest further peaked. My thought first was, hey, Walmart has these on sale, I’ll just get one there. Well, Walmart didn’t have the version that has the options for sous vide and dehydrating. Amazon does, and its the same price as the Walmart version. Additionally, Amazon has the 8 qt version for $40 more.
SOLD!
It arrived this morning.
Unboxing
I gotta say first that this thing was packed pretty well. This is one of those where there is a box within a box. The outer box was just plain brown cardboard, with the inner box being the shiny display with all the marketing material all over it. Once you get the inner box open, they put some of the accessories on top – the trivet tray, the tray for the air fryer lid, the additional grate for the air fryer (so you can broil, dehydrate, or make use of air frying space.) They also give you a manual (no one reads the manual….right?). Inside the box is the rest, in what looks like two pieces – the pressure cooker and the air frying lid. The air frying lid is just a heating element and fan, which turns the instant pot into a convection oven. Inside the pot is the air frying pot, the steel inner pot and some warning labels.
If you’ve owned another pressure cooker, you’ll notice on this one that there are far less “options” for different types of foods. These are just presets that take some of the complexities out of cooking. While its convenient to have this available, most of the time I see people just say to use manual mode (or pressure cooking mode) anyway, rather than use the presets. I think the advantage to that method is that it works for almost any pressure cooker – not just an Instant Pot brand. Also, if you’re interested in the Walmart version of this Instant Pot, note that it does not have the Sous Vide or Dehydrate options on it. This one does and is the same price.
Note: a quick Google search on Instant Pot presets came up with this (https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/heres-what-those-buttons-on-your-instant-pot-actually-mean/).
One thing this has that my other one does not is a stainless steel pot. My other pressure cooker has a non stick pot. Which is mostly fine because Ive never had any issues cleaning the old one. However, its starting to show its age with all the scratches on it. The air fryer basket in this is pretty sizable too. There’s also a tray that sits in there so you can double up, broil, dehydrate or otherwise. Also note how everything is slotted for air frying, so the oils and juices drip to the bottom of the pan. This could be both good and bad.
I’ve been wanting to learn to dehydrate foods for awhile and just haven’t made it a priority. I think now that I have this, we might just have to give it a go.
Conclusion
Since I literally just received this in the mail today, I haven’t had a chance to really make anything in it. I don’t really have an opinion on its features or what I like about this unit vs other units. I’m definitely excited to try some things in it and have plans to do that as early as this evening. For $140, it seems like it would do most things you’d want to do without having to have a separate unit for each. One thing I want to try is making burgers and brats in this and do a comparison between something that is pressure cooked vs air fried. Lunches for me are one of those things where if Im busy, Im more tempted to just go get something. If I can find an easy and convenient way to make something, that is certainly preferable. I believe this unit has a lot of promise and will certainly get a lot of use.